Posts in the 'Guest Contributor' category
We’re living in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. Demand for apartments and condos continues to outpace supply in most urban cores. Upward pressure on asking rents is displacing low-income renters to nearby communities and middle-income renters are starting ...
The narrative about global inequality and poverty often focuses on rural areas in the global south, with a heavy emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. But the reality is that poverty is becoming more concentrated in cities across the ...
Sexual assault on public transit is all too common. In Bogotá, Colombia, an incredible 37% of female riders of the bus rapid transit system report experiencing unwanted sexual contact while using the system, according to new research, funded in part ...
Street lighting is important. It allows informal vendors and traders to operate for longer hours and improves road and public safety. It also makes streets feel safer and more secure, especially for women. But street lighting is sorely lacking in many of sub-Saharan Africa’s ...
Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in a day-long roundtable discussion with the five finalists for the WRI Ross Prize Cities, organized by WRI at the Ford Foundation in New York City. The roundtable followed the first-ever award ...
Contrary to popular belief, the developed world isn’t the best role model when it comes to urban development. In fact, says Gerald Babel-Sutter, the founder and CEO of the Urban Future Global Conference, the developing world can learn more about ...
When we think of design in cities, it’s typically physical environments and infrastructure that come to mind: glass, steel and stone, skylines and main streets, museums, traffic jams, playgrounds and construction sites. But the designs that determine the health and ...
If you visit the Temple of Heaven in the heart of Beijing, you’ll discover a vast network of palaces, pavilions, altars, stages and walking paths scattered over 600 acres of parkland. Recognized as a World Heritage Site for its exceptional ...
Today’s streets are contested spaces. There seems to be an ongoing, intensifying competition between cars, bikes and pedestrians, trying to get from point A to B as quickly as possible. How do they all share the limited space available in ...
This century will be remembered as the urban century. Our generation will witness the most significant urban growth in human history. By 2050, there will be 2.4 billion more people in cities, a rate of urban growth that is the ...
Uber, Lyft, Didi, Ola, Grab, Via, Chariot, Bridj, car2go, Zipcar, Lime, Jump… The list of companies offering new ways to get around – and new business models to access and pay for it – is long and only getting longer. ...
In the 1990s, New York City needed a new water filtration system to serve its nearly 8 million people. But the prospect of spending $6-10 billion on a new water treatment plant, and another $100 million on annual operating costs, ...
Most people now live in cities and cities are growing rapidly. We are living in the midst of the urbanization age, an age that started in earnest at the beginning of the 19th century, when people first decided en masse ...
Our cities are rapidly expanding, and with them motorization is increasing at an unchecked pace. Unless the global community takes meaningful strides to address the impact of these trends on the most vulnerable in our society, we will be met ...
Community participation has become a checklist item for any major urban development project. But what does community participation actually mean? What would it look like if we flipped the responsibility of engagement from citizens to designers? What if, instead of ...
